There are many applications in which it is required to apply a level of management in respect of wireless communications, particularly between a moving platform and a remote target, and maintain adequate wireless communications therebetween for safe operation of the moving platform and mission success.
For example, in the case of aerial vehicles and, more particularly, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), there is an ongoing and stringent requirement to maintain an adequate communications link between the aerial vehicle and a ground station, for example, and unexpected loss or degradation of such a communication link can be catastrophic.
A UAS is composed of three main parts, the unmanned air vehicle (UAV), unmanned control station (UCS) and support systems of the UAS (for pre-mission planning). A UAS Mission System may be composed of the following functional components/subsystems: Mission Management, Communications, Vehicle Health, Navigation System, Airspace Integration, Payload and Power Management. Multiple, different dynamic in-mission planners may reside in one or more of the above-mentioned functional components/subsystems. In a typical UAV, a dynamic route planner generates a new route, in real time, when there is a change in the operational environment, e.g. severe weather, threat, or a change of circumstances, e.g. an emergency, or a dynamic manoeuvre plan is generated to avoid an airborne obstacle. The aim is thus to maintain safety and the survivability of the aircraft by determining a feasible route and/or manoeuvre in real time, while avoiding pop-up, static and dynamic obstacles, for example.
However, the operational environment of moving platforms, at least in some applications, can be particularly challenging from a communications perspective.
The conditions in such environments lead to severe degradation or link failure due to unexpected events, such as platform manoeuvre, interference, jamming, emissions control and weather. So, for link failure, the platform becomes disconnected from the rest of the network. In other words, the platform cannot transmit the information it has to the recipient. This kind of situation can be either temporary or permanent, depending on the cause of the failure. Current systems, the transmitting platform applications continue to transmit their data for off-board transmission, unaware of the network condition. As a result, the transmitting platform applications may overwhelm the buffers within the network router, leading to the loss of critical information. Transmitting platform applications need to manage their information in light of the prevailing situation, by storing higher-priority information until it can be delivered at a later time, either during mission execution or when the platform returns to base. For lower priority information, the platform application may decide to discard the information instead of storing it until the communications problem is resolved. It would, therefore, be desirable to provide an intelligent communications system that is able to adapt and respond dynamically to unexpected events, and provide a method whereby various platform applications and platform systems can respond to prevailing network conditions.